


Just/Heroic

by Iambic



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Act Six, Body Horror, Gen, Post-Scratch, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-29
Updated: 2011-11-29
Packaged: 2017-10-26 16:27:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/285422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iambic/pseuds/Iambic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hope is undead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just/Heroic

**Author's Note:**

> Written with encouragement/contribution from tumblr user justaguywitharrows. Could probably stand a sequel/second chapter; we'll see if that actually happens.

golgothasTerror [GT] began pestering gutsyGumshoe [GG] at 13:25

GT: Jane old chum ive something to tell you.  
GT: Unless our troll buddy already filled you in on the matter.  
GG: Jake! Are you okay? You never replied to any of us after you informed us you were 'going in'.  
GT: Never better!!!  
GG: Thank goodness! We were getting worried.  
GT: Ive discovered a secret to the game though.  
GT: From my denizen as she called herself.  
GT: A fantastically sporting dame that echidna is!  
GT: Did you know there is a way to go beyond simply winning the game???  
GT: Which would be a doozy on its own to be honest  
GT: But this tidbit just takes the cake!  
GT: We the players can unlock the powers of gods!!!  
GT: All it takes is a simple sacrifice.  
GG: Golly!  
GG: What kind of sacrifice?  
GT: Well thats the tough part jane  
GT: You see to become as gods we gotta leave our earthly shells behind  
GT: But its okay!  
GT: Theres an extra life built into the game!  
GG: Wait, Jake, what are you planning to do?  
GT: Gotta run janey!!!  
GT: But ill tell you all about it when im done.  
GT: Pip pip cheerio!!!

golgothasTerror [GT] ceased pestering gutsyGumshoe [GG] at 13:29

GG: Wait, what?  
GG: Jake?  
GG: Good grief.

\--

Jane bursts through the first ring into a land of towers and dust, arid and warm, and she coughs through that first breath of air and has to stand still and gasp for a moment. Strider has found her by then, jumping down from an impressive height down a series of shorter spires to come a halt beside her, concern showing in his face around his ridiculous sunglasses.

"Has Jake made it?" she asks all in a rush as soon as she's got her breath back.

"He ain't late yet, sister," Strider says, but his brows are knitting even more than Lalonde's mother. "Weren't you showing up together?"

"I think he might have done something stupid," Jane says, clutching her hands. "The last time we spoke -- a long time ago -- he something that had me really worried. And he hasn't been in touch with anyone since! Not even to complain about the frogs!"

Strider nods. "He sure does detest those frogs." He looks up toward the next ring through his filthy shades and bites his lower lip, one of those odd vulnerable tics he has that make him seem human and not just another puppet. "So after sending you a concerning message he vanishes his ass off from the face of the game. I think that warrants checking out."

Lalonde is waiting for them when they emerge into her domain, hands on hips and frowning as they catch their breath. "We've got a date with royalty, remember?" she says, but then frowns. "Wasn't Jake supposed to meet up with you, Jane?"

"Something's wrong," Jane says, and her stomach twists tightly around itself, so she keeps mum on the details and hopes.

\--

The land of vines and puddles is dying. Brown and yellow tendrils droop from dry cracking tree limbs, and the water has gone brackish, the frogs around it dead or unmoving. Enormous rotting pumpkins have embedded themselves in the earth, and stink the whole joint up to high heaven. Through the withered canopy Jane can see the mountain Jake described his home resting atop, just as brown and dying as everything else.

No one says anything, but Jane's throat is tight and she's not sure she could have spoken anyway. Lalonde does rest a hand briefly on her back, the awkward reassurance of the socially incompetent girl they have discovered her to be. Strider smiles at them, quick and pained, and Jane tries one back. It must have worked, because he relaxes a little.

The walk takes them hours, though Jane has no way of knowing how many. The blight has at least made navigating the undergrowth easier, once tenacious vines now snapping under the slightest pressure, not even close to a match for Strider's sword. Jane's knuckles on the Inspoonerator grow white and begin to ache.

Climbing up the mountain takes even longer, though it's not as steep as it looks from far off. Here the blight is worse, not better, the gruesome innards of soft shattered pumpkins littering the trails and dangling brown vines crackling underfoot. What grass there might have been is long gone.

"Jane," Lalonde whispers when they're not far from the summit, and points. A frog has hopped onto a nearby rock. But on closer examination something is terribly amiss; the animal's eyes are sunken and its skin crackly dry, one foot hanging half off.

"That's horrible," Jane says, swallowing against nausea.

"Shit's beyond permissable," Strider agrees.

Jake's home has collapsed. The damage looks old but everything here looks that way, like decades were somehow compressed into hours, some kind of rapid deterioration. Its odd smooth material where unbroken has a soft sheen to it, not quite plastic or stone, not quite anything at all. Laid out before it in hapless disorder stand bits of machinery, tools of the game, and frogs of every colour. They look healthier than the specimen further down the mountain, but not much. In the center of it all, staring blindly at one glowing tube, is Jake.

Whatever Jane expected -- any of them expected -- it can't have been this. His skin is in worse shape than the frogs', beyond dry; it has gone to powder, flaking off like tree bark, collapsing in dust at his feet and baring muscles, ligaments, and where they lurk close to the skin, bones. The flesh of his face has shrunk around his skull to outline every individual line and crevice, every withered muscle. He holds himself stiffly, as if it's only his limbs locked in place that keep him up. Old dried blood stains his shirt and shorts, lines the creases of his joints that have not yet disintegrated.

Lalonde screams, Strider claps both hands to his mouth, and Jane doubles over against a roiling stomach.

"Check that glass case out," Strider says, voice hoarse and strained. "He's got a healthy frog in there."

"How can you even look at it?" Lalonde demands. Her face is turned away, hands up like she wants to wrap them around something but can't think what.

In front of Jake is indeed a collection of living frogs, and within the glass is one vivid individual, the source of the glowing. The embodiment of a universe, the thing Jake has effectively sacrificed himself for. There is no expression in his eyes, no spark, no life at all.

Jane goes up to him and has to make herself place a hand on his fraying shoulder, but he doesn’t even seem to feel it. He just stands there, facing his amphibious creation with dead eyes, and Jane wonders if he's run out of life. If this is to be as gods really means.

But then he makes a wheezing sort of noise, like a mostly-sealed bag being squeezed shut. It almost sounds like he’s trying to say her name. She steps between him and the frogs and makes herself meet his unmoving gaze. The locked muscles in his face twitch. He raises a stiff, diminished arm; Jane flinches but holds herself in place. He doesn’t touch her, though, but points to one of the smaller pumpkins lying around near his workstation.

Jane steps delicately over and picks it up. Carved into one side in messy, uneven scratches, Jake has written ‘IM SORRY.’

On the other side, even sloppier: ‘MERCY IS JUSTIFIABLE.’

Jane drops the thing in horror and runs away. There’s no way she can go through with it. She knows that her brother has been dead for a long time and there’s no bringing him back, but a part of her refuses to believe that it’s over.

Jake gazes after her and anybody who was watching wouldn’t be able to tell if he’s really seeing her or if he just happened to be looking that way to begin with and forgot to look elsewhere.

It’s Strider who finally does it. He’s always been the friend who did the things nobody else could or would. He owes it to Jake, he tells himself, for what they almost had before the game cut everything short.

The first motion Jake makes in days when Strider comes into view is to sit up and make a garbled moan — recognition, greeting, who knows.

“Hey bromide.” Strider says it so easily, like nothing has changed. “Good job on the frog. We couldn’t've done it without you. That was a compliment, by the way, so you’d best cherish this one of a kind Kodak moment.” When Jake doesn’t respond he continues. “Here I am, as usual, come to assist you in your time of need. It’s not normally my policy to just hand it to you. Making things too easy would be a disservice to you, but I figured I’d cut you some slack just this once.”

He has a bottle of kerosene with him and he uses it on Jake’s nest, the one he’s been sitting in since the frog. He doesn’t know how else to surefire kill a zombie. Before he lights the match he forces himself to look into his friend’s eyes. “Are you sure about this?”

Jake acknowledges what’s happening for the first time. He grasps Strider’s arm and to his credit, Strider doesn’t even flinch. Jake looks at him. Really looks at him. And then he lets go.

“Okay. You asked for it.” He lights the match. “Dude, you were great,” and then everything goes up in flames.

Later Strider would tell the others that Jake burned quick and smokelessly, as dry as his body had become. But the scent of charring paper and cooking meat clung to the area, and to Strider himself, enough so that when he first rejoined them Jane retched helplessly for about five minutes before regaining her composure enough to ask, shakily, how it had gone.

They keep together and keep watch, fighting their way through to the King, Jane the most adamantly. Strider takes over when she needs her concentration to take out an especially large imp or some other such roadblock, or to give the growing number of carapace followers a rousing speech.

“You know he’s not coming back,” Lalonde says, in a hard, brittle voice. “He’s dead. Unless you lied, bro.”

Jane swallows. “His death wasn’t just. It was stupid.”

“He died like a hero,” Strider puts in.

Jane rounds on him. “He was already dead!”

“He’s not coming back,” Lalonde repeats. “You’re just kidding yourself.”

Night is constant on the moons of Prospit and Derse, but takes a long time on Skaia. The shadows have only begun to turn long and red as the band of three and their faithful entourage approach the tall violet castle of the Dersian king.

“He’ll be here,” Jane says, quiet and sure. “He’s the Page of Hope. He’ll be here.”

Lalonde shakes her head, tangled tresses falling about her face. “Hope is dead.”


End file.
